"High-flown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blue ribbon between the faded leaves. A tremor ran through her limbs, and going to the window she placed the book upon the sill and read the words aloud in the fragrant stillness. Behind her in the dim room Dan seemed to rise as suddenly as a ghost—and that high-flown chivalry of his, which delighted in sounding phrases as in heroic virtues, was loosened from the ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... associated with the greater number of them. Give a clever young medical student a book about aural or dental surgery to review, and the chances are ten to one that the criticism will be little else than a high-flown grandiloquent treatise on the wonders of the creation. A regular "literary hack" will do the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... got nothing to do," old goody Liu said, "a few of us too often come together and play this sort of game; but the answers we give are not so high-flown; yet, as I can't get out of it, I'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... before, the Senator broke in upon us with his cheery, charming voice, "Guess you two are talking like high-flown poet coons," he said, "and there is breakfast to be thought of, and happy things like that." And then as Nelson went in front he stepped back and put his kind hand under my chin, and raised it and looked straight into ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... know my views. I want you to be just a sensible, good child, without any of those high-flown notions. When we return to town you must make up for your long holiday. You must do your lessons with extreme care, and try ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... his host. It is further alleged that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and behaved in a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-flown Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice divers madrigals and heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion; chiefly in regard to a "little one" who was his, the Commander's, "soul"! These ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... all. There are other riddles as hard in Umbria. Renan saw the gentle cadence of the landscape—violet hills, the silver gauze of water, oliveyards all of a green mist; read the Fioretti and the dolorous ecstasies of Perugino's Sebastian, and straightway adapted the high-flown parallel worked out in detail by Giotto. Umbria for him was the Galilee of Italy, and Francis son of Bernard an avatar of Christ. But Renan was apt to allow his emotions to ride him. Another dazzling contrast, which has recently exercised another dextrous Frenchman, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... he commented. "Thar hain't a place ye can't git to, though why ye should want to git thar beats me. Mostly puts high-flown notions in the women-folks' heads, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... right, Mapela the Wise One," answered the king, kindly overlooking—or perhaps not noticing—the rather lame and impotent conclusion of the induna's high-flown speech. "Yes; perhaps thou art right," (this rather regretfully). "But there is no reason why I should not at once show myself to my wives; and, by the bones of my royal father, I will! There be those among them who of late have shown a tendency to make light of my words and hold me of small ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... went well, and the President, who accompanied the commando in person, succeeded in reducing a mountain stronghold, which, in his high-flown way, he called a "glorious victory" ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... stage-managing of her lively adventures. There is hardly an attempt at characterisation. The people are mere masqueraders, who amuse us by their costume and mannerisms, but reveal no individuality. The plot is a wild extravaganza, crammed with high-flown, mock-romantic episodes. Cherry Wilkinson, as the result of a surfeit of romances, perhaps including The Misanthropic Parent or The Guarded Secret (1807), by Miss Smith, deserts her real father—a worthy farmer—to look for more aristocratic parents. As he is not picturesque enough ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... saturated her mind with the fiction of penny weeklies, and owed to this training all manner of awkward affectations which she took to be the most becoming manifestations of a susceptible heart. At times she would express herself in phrases of the most absurdly high-flown kind, and lately she had got into the habit of heaving profound sighs between her sentences. Julian was not blind to the meaning of all this. His active employments during the past week had kept his thoughts from brooding on the matter, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... a delightful pun. Gerwazy misunderstands his lord's high-flown word wassalow (vassals) as wonsalow (mustachioed champions). A long mustache was the dearest adornment of a Polish gentleman; compare Gerwazy's description of Jacek on pages 43 and 115, where wonsal is the title ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... no use to talk to Flora," said Ethel; "she would say it was high-flown and visionary. Oh! she wants it for the bazaar's own sake, and that is one reason ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the skipper, now struggling manfully to suppress his inclination to laugh outright at the man's high-flown phraseology; "let it be so, then. Mr Fortescue, I leave it with you to arrange the matter." And he ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... years ago quoted from a magazine article on American elections a sentence which said: 'A little sound common-sense often goes further with an audience of American working men than much high-flown argument. A speaker who, as he brought forward his points, hammered nails into a board, won hundreds of votes for his side at the last Presidential election.'[22] The 'sound common-sense' consisted, not, as Mr. Chesterton pretended ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... to this venture of ours in a letter to Sidney Colvin as "the play which the sister and I are just beating our way through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar." Nevertheless, we made some headway, and I remember that he marvelled greatly at the far-fetched, high-flown similes and figures of speech indulged in by the writers of the "Golden Age" of Spain. In spite of his confessed dislike for the cold-blooded study of the grammar, we did not altogether neglect it, and a day comes to my mind when he was assisting ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... world, also an angel, of course. Marriage soon opens his eyes. It would be out of the course of nature for every body to secure an angel; and the young husband finds that he has married a woman of the ordinary pattern—not a whit better on the whole than man; perhaps worse, because weaker. The high-flown sentiment is all gone, the romantic ideas fade down to the light of common day. "The bloom of young desire, the purple light of love," as Milton writes in one of the most beautiful lines ever penned, too often ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... high. It is true the period was still roseate with knighterrantry; men wore armor, and did battle behind shields; women were objects of devotion; conversation between lovers was in the style of high-flown courtesy, chary on one side, energized on the other by calls on the Saints to witness vows and declarations which no Saint, however dubious his reputation, could have listened to, much less excused; yet it were not well to overlook one or two qualifications. The usages referred ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... themselves down beside the stream, upon a little grassy rise shadowed by a huge sugar-tree. A mound of turf, flanked by two spreading roots, was the Governor's chair of state, and Alce and Molly he must needs seat beside him. Not one of his gay company but seemed an adept in the high-flown compliment of the age; out of very idleness and the mirth born of that summer hour they followed his Excellency's lead, and plied the two simple women with all the wordy ammunition that a tolerable acquaintance with the mythology of the ancients ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... but natural that the earlier lights should be dying out before the later; that Lord Jeffrey, the old king of critics, should pass beyond the sound of reviews; and Wordsworth, after this spring, be seen no more among the Cumberland hills and dales; and Jane Porter, whose innocent high-flown romances had been the delight of the young reading world more than fifty years before, should end her days, a cheerful old lady, in ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... into a very high-flown eulogium of her intellectual capacity, so as to enlist her vanity in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a certain preliminary," said Crosby; "one would take him to a wine-shop and treat him to a measure of wine, and then, after a little high-flown conversation, one would put the desired sum in his hand and wish him good-day. It is a roundabout way of performing a simple transaction, but in the East ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... other brethren of his gown. For party he would scarce have bled: I say no more—because he's dead. What writings has he left behind? I hear, they're of a different kind; A few in verse; but most in prose— Some high-flown pamphlets, I suppose;— All scribbled in the worst of times, To palliate his friend Oxford's crimes, To praise Queen Anne, nay more, defend her, As never fav'ring the Pretender; Or libels yet conceal'd from sight, Against the court to show his spite; Perhaps his travels, part the third; A lie at ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... plates, containing hideous representations of dreadful eruption, and sores covering all parts of the body, are submitted to the patient's horrified inspection. Frightened by the hideous pictures before him, and at the same time soothed and charmed by the high-flown encomiums which the quack pronounces on his particular "non-mercurial mode of treatment," the patient becomes anxious to submit himself to the process. The quack is equally ready to take the case in hand, and the only stumbling-block likely to be in the way, may be the ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... legislature protested; the people of Connecticut meditated resistance. A convention was held at Middletown in December, at which two thirds of the towns in the state were represented, and the best method of overruling Congress was discussed. Much high-flown eloquence was wasted, but the convention broke up without deciding upon any course of action. The matter had become so serious that wise men changed their minds, and disapproved of proceedings calculated to throw Congress into contempt. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... afraid you might disapprove of my deliberation. My chief hope rests upon Miss Wyllys's good sense and the wishes of her friends, who, I think, are evidently favourable to me. She has no silly, high-flown notions; she is now of an age—three or four-and-twenty I think—to take a reasonable view of the world; and I hope she will find the sincere affection of a respectable man, whose habits and position resemble her own, sufficient ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Highnesses and Excellencies. On the whole it seems to have been a peaceful, idle, rather trivial time of sojourn among congenial people. He danced, he strolled, he wrote verses to little Miss Emily; in short, he enjoyed himself as a youngish man may, whether the muse is waiting for him, or some less high-flown customer. "I wish I could give you a good account of my literary labors," he wrote his sister after several months in Dresden, "but I have nothing to report. I am merely seeing, and hearing, and my mind seems in too crowded ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... kept her word; she played with power and genius. Words of passion and of pain flowed like a stream of lava from her lips; her oaths of faith and eternal constancy, her wild entreaties, her resignation, her despair, were not the high-flown, pompous phrases of the tragedian, but truth in its omnipotence. It was living passion, it was breathing agony; and, with fast-flowing tears, with the pallor of death, she told her tale of love; and in that vast saloon, glittering with jewels, filled with the high-born, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... even, "and I counsel you, Miriam, in turn, to seek your draughts of soul from our pure 'wells of English undefiled,' rather than such high-flown fancies and maudlin streams as flow from the pen of this accomplished Hebrew. There is a little too much of the Jeremiah and Isaiah style about such extracts as I have seen, to suit ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... spite of his less orthodox opinions. So she made up her mind that she would not catch Christopher's eye on the present occasion, as she usually did when anything amused her, because it was cruel to laugh at the frustration of poor Alan's high-flown plans; and then naturally she looked straight at the spot where Chris was presiding over a table, and returned his smile of perfect comprehension. It was one of Elisabeth's peculiarities that she invariably ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... riding by awhile, A wealthy lover was he, whose smile Some maids would value greatly - A formal lover, who bowed and bent, With many a high-flown compliment, And cold demeanour stately, "You've still," said she to her suitor stern, "The 'prentice-work of your craft to learn, If thus you come a-cooing. I've time to lose and power to choose; 'T is not so much the gallant who woos, As the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... had not pased away, when news was brought us of a new revolution in Mexico! General Valencia, he who pronounced (but two short months ago!) the high-flown and flattering speech to the president, on receiving the sword of honour, has now pronounced in a very different and much clearer manner. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... dire intent lowering in his eyes. To the amusement of all, and to my increased consternation, he drew forth a volume of the Wild Irish Girl, and reading with his deep, emphatic voice one of the most high-flown of its passages, he paused, and patting the page with his fore finger, with the look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said, 'Little girl, why did you write such nonsense? and where did you get all those damned hard words?' Thus taken by surprise, and smarting with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... run the risk of being compelled so to do. At one o'clock in the morning their boat came alongside, when Paroissien solicited an interview, Spry remaining in the boat, having his own reasons for not wishing to attract my attention. Paroissien then addressed me with the most high-flown promises, assuring me of the Protector's wish, notwithstanding all that had occurred, to confer upon me the highest honours and rewards, amongst others the decoration of the newly-created order of "the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... do wish to lunch with me, Doctor von Kammacher, you must not have high-flown notions, like Mr. Ritter," said Miss Burns halting in front ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... 78):—'To day the House of Commons was employed in a very odd way. Tommy Townshend moved that the sermon of Dr. Nowell, who preached before the House on the 30th of January (id est, before the Speaker and four members), should be burnt by the common hangman, as containing arbitrary, Tory, high-flown doctrines. The House was nearly agreeing to the motion, till they recollected that they had already thanked the preacher for his excellent discourse, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... tails docked, because nature had humanely given those tails as a protection against flies. The Grandisonian manners are not to be taken as a picture of contemporary fashion. Richardson was unacquainted with aristocratic habits, and his high-flown love scenes were purely ideal. When he goes into high life, said Chesterfield, "he mistakes the modes." Not long before Sir Charles was making his formal and courtly addresses to Miss Byron, Walpole had written to George Montagu: "'Tis no little inducement to wish ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... robes were classically correct and graceful, though sundry modern additions somewhat marred the effect, while adding point to the showman's learned remarks. Mr Laurie was Professor Owlsdark in cap and gown; and, after a high-flown introduction, he proceeded to exhibit and explain his marbles. The first figure was a stately Minerva; but a second glance produced a laugh, for the words 'Women's Rights' adorned her shield, a scroll bearing the motto 'Vote early and often' hung from the beak of the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... genteel assortment ov the best figures of rhetoric, sich as mettonymy, hyperbol, cattychraysis, prolipsis, mettylipsis, superbaton, pollysyndreton, hustheronprotheron, prosodypeia and the like, in ordher that he may never be at a loss for shuitable sintiments when he comes to their high-flown passidges. For unless we thrate them Fathers liberally to a handsome allowance ov thropes and figures they'd set up heresy at ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... was accustomed to the high-flown compliments of polite society, but she could not doubt the sincerity of this man, who had no place in a world where idle flattery was the small coin of talk. She blushed slightly and changed the subject, and as he talked, less and less ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... sculptured monument marks thy resting-place! No eulogistic sermon, no high-flown panegyric was ever delivered, on thy life and death! Yet that silent tear of old Isaac's outspoke a thousand eulogies! It told of all thy kindness, charity, love, angelic purity of heart, and called thee "Guardian Angel" of the ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... is just what one does not learn from books," the lad said. "At any rate, not from such books as I have been working at. I could do a high-flown sentence, and offer to kiss your hand and to declare that all I have is at your disposal. But if I wanted to say, 'When are we going to halt for dinner? I am feeling very peckish,' I ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... minister will always endeavor to dazzle his prince with high-flown ideas of the prerogative and honor of the crown, which the minister will make a parade of firmly maintaining. I wish as much as any man in the kingdom to see the honor of the crown maintained in a manner ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... understand the elation with which I announced my success to Gladys Todd. It was magnified by the month of disappointment, and to her I felt that I owed a debt. Though I had come to look with irony on her high-flown expressions of faith in me, I realized that the fear of her equally high-flown scorn had more than once kept me from abandoning my project. With pride I enclosed in my letter my account of the funeral of Mr. Weinberg, though I refrained from marring the trophy ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... wanted energy." There is therefore nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished: the hasty limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving; the men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is Death as a murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they send her she gives thanks; but needs not any shriving, or ghostly or ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Boltby. "He will have his price, Sir Harry," said the lawyer. Then Sir Harry's eyes were opened, and so excellent did this mode of escape seem to him that he was ready to pay almost any price for the article. He saw it at a glance. Emily had high-flown notions, and would not yield; he feared that she would not yield, let Cousin George's delinquencies be shown to be as black as Styx. But if Cousin George could be made to give her up,—then Emily must yield; and, yielding in such manner, having received so rude a proof ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... girl!" she said. "You have the most extraordinary high-flown notions, and I think they will lead you into trouble! However, I'll give you one more chance—if at the end of this year you would like to come to me, my offer to you still holds good. After that—well!—as you yourself said, you will have ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... her time in a great measure with her Mount Street relations. Eliza was a source of continual irritation, and the Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, to refrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On the other hand he found among the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper. Two extracts from a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak more eloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader the antagonism which had ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Ben Zoof had mounted his hobby-horse, and was indulging in high-flown praises about his beloved eighteenth arrondissement, the captain had remarked gravely, "Do you know, Ben Zoof, that Montmartre only requires a matter of some thirteen thousand feet to make it as high ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... talk," replied Dunphy, uneasily however, "and from the high-flown language you give me, I take you to be a lawyer; but if you were ten times a lawyer, and a judge to the back of that, a man can't tell what ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... have not seen since thy last withdrawal," answered Dicky blandly, in the high-flown ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in India can hardly be said to justify the title it assumed, and in answer to a deputation which waited on the Governor, Sir George Lloyd expressed a legitimate desire for more information than was contained in its high-flown address as to the status of these unions, their method of formation, their constitution, their system of ballot and election, and the actual experience in the several trades of those who claimed to represent them. That information was not and could ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... forgotten for a moment—how great was the chasm that separated me from these women; how impossible it was that we could long think alike; how far apart in views, in experience, in aims we were. And while I made a mock in my heart of their high-flown sentiments—or thought I did—I laughed no less at the folly which had led me to dream, even for a moment, that I could, at my age, go back—go back and risk all for a whim, a scruple, the ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... obliged to confess is my name. A pretty one and proper one enough when it was given to me: but, a good many years out of date now, and always sounding particularly high-flown and comical from his lips. ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... and the high-flown compliment, exceedingly undeserved, obscured, I suppose, the bright wits of the intellectual convocation, which really began to think that their liberality of opinion deserved ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... he assisted his father in the butchering business; and that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown butchering, but only slaughtering calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony of a man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man who could have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and neither ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... These high-flown maxims astonished Louis de Camors. In his youthful simplicity he had an infinite respect for the men who had governed his country in her darkest hour; not more that they had given up power as poor as when they assumed it, than that they left it with their hands ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... windows, gold chairs, and fine folks. Oh, I would like to live in a castle with a father and mother like that," said Merry, who was romantic, and found the old farmhouse on the hill a sad trial to her high-flown ideas ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... guide, philosopher, and friend—was so strong and rooted in my father, that I observed, a few weeks ago, in a magazine, an original letter, written by him about this time to Dr. Vicesimus Knox, full of high-flown sentiments, reading indeed like a romance of Scudery, and entreating the learned critic to receive him in his family, and give him the advantage of his wisdom, his taste, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... reckon not, his notions are so high-flown," the colonel admitted, with evident pride in the lofty bearing of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... ridicule the ideals and ambitions of children when they seem to us too high-flown or futile. But a person's ideals stand too close to the centre of his character to be treated so rudely. It is better to ignore the many trifling flights of fancy that are not likely to have any permanent effect, and to throw the ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... meek-eyed sheep lay sunning themselves upon the trampled graves, and the slow- measured sound of a bell dinged now and then as cattle browsed on the scanty herbage in this most neglected of God's Acres. Could Charles Lamb have turned from the pompous epitaphs and high-flown panegyrics of that English cemetery, to the rudely-lettered boards which here briefly told the names and ages of the sleepers in these narrow beds, he had never asked the question which now stands as a melancholy epigram on family favoritism and human frailty. Gold gilds even the lineaments ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the book is destined, we believe, to do much more good than harm. Admit all its high-flown sentimentalism to be half-unconscious affectation, such as we pardon in writers of the Great Nation,—admit that the author is wild and fanciful in many of his statements, that he talks of a state of society of which it has been said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... am—a walking 'cyclopaedia?" broke in Bob indignantly. "Cut out that high-flown talk with me, Mart, and get down to where I can collect on you. Going to ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... elder the executor of his will, declaring that the clergy "should in no way be called off from their holy ministrations nor tied down by secular troubles and business." [579:3] But the common sense of the Church revolted against such high-flown spiritualism, as in many districts where the disciples were still few and indigent, they could not afford a suitable support for all entrusted with the performance of ecclesiastical duties. Hence, before the recognition of Christianity by Constantine, even bishops in some countries ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... put it down to my weak nerves or not, but I believe there is some deep political intrigue going on around me, and that for some reason that passes my understanding my life is aimed at by the conspirators. It sounds high-flown and absurd, but consider the facts! Why should a thief try to break in at a bedroom window, where there could be no hope of any plunder, and why should he come with a ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... one thing, he saw that to nullify or to tamper with copyright was in effect to prevent an author from having any commodity to sell, and so to do him the most serious injury possible. And for another thing, Diderot had equity and common sense enough to see that no high-flown nonsense about the dignity of letters and the spiritual power could touch the fact that a book is a piece of marketable ware, and that the men who deal in such wares have as much claim to be protected in their contracts as those who deal ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... 'Come, Pancratius, this, I understand, is the last time we meet here; but I have a long score to demand payment of from you. You have loved to show your superiority in school over me and others older and better than yourself; I saw your supercilious looks at me as you spouted your high-flown declamation to-day; ay, and I caught expressions in it which you may live to rue, and that very soon. Before you leave us, I must have my revenge. If you are worthy of your name let us fairly contend in ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... a bushel, not put one's talent in a napkin; not think small beer of oneself &c. (vanity) 880. Adj. dignified; stately; proud, proud-crested; lordly, baronial; lofty-minded; highsouled, high-minded, high-mettled[obs3], high-handed, high-plumed, high-flown, high-toned. haughty lofty, high, mighty, swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, magisterial, imperious, high and mighty, overweening, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and more high-flown she sometimes talked of sweeping crossings; but her sister-in-law Susie would not hear of crossings, and dressed her beautifully, and took her out, and made her dance and dine and do as other girls did, being of opinion that a rich husband of good position was more satisfactory ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... Hadj of Tamsloht, to whom he offered to send me with letters and an escort. Moreover, he offered an escort to see us out of the city and on the road to the coast, but I judged it better to decline both offers, and, with many high-flown compliments, left him by the entrance to his great house, and groped back through the mud to put the finishing ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... us, in addition, how we came to know it. It thus places facts before us in the natural order of their ascertainment, and narrates instead of enumerating. The story to be told leaves the marvels of imagination far behind, and requires no embellishment from literary art or high-flown phrases. Its best ornament is unvarnished truthfulness, and this, at least, may confidently be claimed to be bestowed upon ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... acquaintance he had seen her in almost all the moods there are, from bitter gloom to the irrepressible gayety of a little child. He had told her once that she was like an organ, and she had laughed at him for being pretentious and high-flown, though she could upon occasion be quite high-flown enough herself ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... joker's art. It was well known that Malachi had an undying hatred for words of four syllables and over, and the use of them was always sufficient to forfeit any good opinions he might have previously entertained concerning the user. "I hate them high-flown words," he would say—"I got a book at home that I could get them out of if I wanted them; but I don't." The book referred to was a very dilapidated dictionary. Malachi's hatred for high-flown words was only equalled by his aversion ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... laid her down at night, and awoke in the morning, wishing still to prolong the oblivion of sleep. Anger with Robert would have been a solace, but his dejection forbade this; nor could she resent his high-flown notions of duty, and deem herself their victim, since she had slighted fair warning, and repelled his attempts to address her. She saw no resource save the Holt, now more hopelessly dreary and distasteful than ever, and she shrank both from writing to Honor, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a high-flown phrase of thanks in a bitter, absent whisper. I knew well enough that the help he had given me was not for money, not for love—not even for loyalty to the Riegos. It was obedience to the last recommendation ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... smoking and exchanging compliments in the high-flown, stilted Samoan style, there entered the house a strapping young warrior, carrying a wickerwork cage, in which were two of the rare and famous Manu Mea (red-bird) of Samoa—the Didunculus or tooth-billed pigeon. These were the property of the young chief ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... brought up in times when all the doings of young girls were strictly supervised, and who had no high-flown scruples, because she had no mean motives, deliberately walked over and fetched the elegant little volume from the table, reseated herself in her armchair—felt for her glasses, and set them carefully upon her nose—and, as her grandniece ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... though the description undoubtedly partook of George's usual high-flown couleur-de-rose style, the manor being only a manor provided the owner sacrificed his interest in Swillingford by driving off its poachers, and the river being only a river when the tiny Swill was swollen into one, still Hanby House was a very nice attractive ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... of the best life, the combination of action and thought, but keeping a clear vision of it before our minds, so far as our human nature will permit, let us liken ourselves to immortal God by word and deed."[158] High-flown this language may be, but what Philo wishes to mark is the spiritual value of the Sabbath. It is not merely a day of rest from workaday toil, but it is a day upon which we devote all our thoughts to God, and enter into closer communion with Him, [Hebrew: mnoht ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... delightful little comedy of prying and veiling courtesies was played out, to the great amusement of the English sea-dogs. Finally, when the time agreed upon was up, the Spanish officer departed, pouring forth a stream of high-flown compliments, which Drake, who was a Spanish scholar, answered with the like. Waving each other a ceremonious adieu the two leaders were left no ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... but they are all old and unfit for field service. A French Colonel has lately been imported to fill the combined offices of War-Minister and Commander-in-Chief. This, and, indeed, the whole of the recent internal policy, leaves very little doubt of the source whence emanate these high-flown ideas. It cannot be better expressed than as a politique d'ostentation, which is, if we may compare small things with great, eminently French. The oscillation of French and Russian influence, and the amicable ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... ceremonious Lisbon lover Lemos, the high-flown Castilian of fearful presence and a lion's heart, however threadbare his capa[128], the starving gentleman who makes a tost[a]o ( 5d.) last a month and dines off a turnip and a crust of bread, another—a sixteenth ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... lately imported from Paris, recommended by Mademoiselle Scudery, and full of high-flown ideas expressed in high-flown language. All Paris had laughed at Moliere's Precieuses Ridicules; but the Precieuses themselves, and their friends, protested that the popular farce was aimed only at the low-born imitators of those great ladies who had originated the school ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Quack! Quack! You must think we are slack! You talk too polite altogether; We've had quite enough of your high-flown stuff, And we know, you are ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... above the vulgarities of society and nature, maintain, through eternal folios, their visionary virtues, without the stain of any moral frailty, or the degradation of any human necessities. But this high-flown style went out of fashion as the great mass of mankind became more informed of each other's feelings and concerns, and as a nearer intercourse taught them that the real course of human life is a conflict of duty and desire, of virtue and passion, of right and wrong; in the description ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a book that is something like life, and I'll read it," he exclaimed impatiently; "but I can't swallow the high-flown prosings ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reconcile the various conflicting authorities contesting for supremacy in his soul, Walter threw himself into a severe spell of blues. He was not conscious of the contrast between the world of his high-flown fancy and the earthy environment of his home-life. The sympathetic care which he should have received after his illness had not fallen ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to the solution of the riddle, or else—what is more likely, in spite of his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"—that his mind, and the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time than the Edmundsbury Monks. But they did not make the stone, nor did they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk—they ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... romantic Adrian; hence the poetry. On the whole the rhymes went pretty well, though there were difficulties, but with industry he got round them. Finally the sonnet, a high-flown and very absurd ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and hand in hand they walked toward the house, ceremonious beyond naturalness in acting out the spirit summoned by a woman steeped in the essences of high-flown books. "The trumpet," she said when they heard Margaret's dinner horn, and not even Tom, who could have recalled many a rakish bout of a Saturday night and many an unholy laugh in church of a Sunday, dared to smile at her. "You've caught me all right, auntie, and I'm strutting like ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... uttered a little laugh. "Oh, she was very ridiculous and high-flown, as you may imagine. But, as I told her, I am directly responsible to her mother for any friendships she may make out here, and I am not disposed to take any risks. We all know what Mrs. Bathurst can be like if she ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... months later, when she was in Dublin again, she picked up a novel in a friend's house, and found that it was her own St. Clair. On recalling herself to the publisher's memory, she received the handsome remuneration of—four copies of her own work! The book, a foolish, high-flown story, a long way after Werther, had some success in Dublin, and brought its author—literary ladies being comparatively few at that period—a certain meed ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... when hopes so vain Were stirring in my heart and brain, When Fancy had allured my soul Into a chase as vague and far As would be his who fixt his goal In the horizon or some star— Any bewilderment that brought More near to earth my high-flown thought— The faintest glimpse of joy, less pure, Less high and heavenly, but more sure, Came welcome—and was then to me What the first flowery isle must be To vagrant birds ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... have left; so that the victims would be more severely punished than the swindler. And so, powerless, justice does not interfere. And that's what accounts for the impudence and impunity of all these high-flown rascals who go about with their heads high, their pockets filled with other people's money, and half a dozen ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... to every Ordinance of Man, for the Lord's Sake, says the Apostle. Where (by the way) pray take notice, he calls them Ordinances of Man; and gives you the true Notion, how far any thing can be said to be Jure Divino: which is far short of what your high-flown Assertors of the Jus Divinum wou'd carry it, and proves as strongly for a Republican Government as a Monarchical; tho' in truth it affects neither, where the very ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... bright eyes moistened with quick-springing tears. She smiled, and her face looked to Theo like the face of an angel; though he was impatient of the motive, he adored her for it. And she gave her head a little toss, as if to shake off this undue emotion. "I need not talk any high-flown nonsense about such a simple duty, need I?" she said, once more with a soft laugh. Instead of making the most of her pathetic position, she would always ignore the claims she had upon sympathy. Her simple ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... an extraordinary admiration of this lady, notwithstanding she was a violent Whig. In answer to her high-flown speeches for Liberty, he addressed to her the following Epigram, of which I presume to offer ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... is, to use a high-flown expression, an oasis in the desert, and may be likened to a spot upon the moon or a solitary ship upon the ocean. In plain English, it is an isolated settlement on the borders of one of the vast prairies of ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Observe how this pompous and formal statement is framed so as to please the mother. The writer does not say much about himself; but he knows that his wife is longing to hear of her darlings, and he tells her the news in his high-flown manner. He was not often apart from the lady whom he loved so well; but I am glad that they were sometimes separated, since the separations give us the delicate and tender letters every phrase of which tells a long story of love and confidence and mutual pride. That unequalled ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Kenyon in his Catalogue of the Greek Papyri in the British Museum, especially the letters of Flavius Abinaeus, a military officer of the fourth century. The papyri of this period are full of the high-flown titles and affected phraseology which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes. "Glorious Dukes of the Thebaid," "most magnificent counts and lieutenants," "all-praiseworthy secretaries," and the like strut across the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... and purchase it with his blood. He had resolved to fight and fall. It was very evident that the friend of Mr Bellamy expected rather to frighten Michael into a humble and contrite apology, than to find him ready and eager for the battle; for he commenced his mission by a very long and high-flown address, and assured Mr Allcraft, time after time, that nothing but the most ample and the most public amende could be received by his friend after what had taken place. Michael listened impatiently, and interrupted the speaker in the midst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... was Crowdy,—Crowdy, whose high-flown ideas hardly tallied with the stern realities of his life. Crowdy was the leader of those who had once held firmly by Protection. Crowdy had been staunchly true to his party since he had a party, though it had been said of him that the adventures of Crowdy ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... much of Guli Springett, whom I have seen sundry times, and think high-flown, in spight of her levelling Principles and demure Carriage. The Youth is bewitched with her, I think; what has a Woman to do with Logique? My Belief is, he might as well hope to marry the Moon as to win Mistress Springett's ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... myself in a position, which, but for her interference, might have become a very disgraceful one. Either her mother told her, or Rachel heard what passed—I can't say which. She took her own romantic, high-flown view of the matter. I was "heartless"; I was "dishonourable"; I had "no principle"; there was "no knowing what I might do next"—in short, she said some of the severest things to me which I had ever heard ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... fault was an excess of emotionalism; that is to say, she attached too much importance to mere feeling and described it, in French of marvellous ease and beauty, with a good deal of something else which one can almost condemn as the high-flown. Not that the high-flown is of necessity unnatural, but it is misleading; it places the passing mood, the lyrical note, dependent on so many accidents, above the essential temperament and the dominant chord ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Theo's been so troublesome! And he wants to take us down on the third of next month. He will explain to you the why of it all; perhaps you'll understand better than I could. Such high-flown notions don't appeal to me a bit. I think Theo is rather like that silly man in the Middle Ages who was always trying to fight windmills, or sheep, or something; and there really ought to be a law to prevent people who want to go about being unselfish to everybody from ever ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... conviction inspired many of the volunteers. They regarded as brutal tyranny the tax on tea, considered in England as a mild expedient for raising needed revenue for defense in the colonies. The men of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, meeting in September, 1774, had declared in high-flown terms that the proposed tax came from a parricide who held a dagger at their bosoms and that those who resisted him would earn praises to eternity. From nearly every colony came similar utterances, and flaming resentment at injustice filled the volunteer army. Many a soldier would not ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... after her stepdaughter's return to Edgeworthtown she occupied herself with various literary works, correcting some of her former MSS. for the press, and writing 'Madame de Fleury,' 'Emilie de Coulanges,' and 'Leonora.' But the high-flown and romantic style did suit her gift, and she wrote best when her genuine interest and unaffected glances shone with bright understanding sympathy upon her immediate surroundings. When we are told that 'Leonora' was written in the style the Chevalier Edelcrantz ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... conversation which now took place between Mr. Sedley and the young lady; for the conversation, as may be judged from the foregoing specimen, was not especially witty or eloquent; it seldom is in private societies, or anywhere except in very high-flown and ingenious novels. As there was music in the next room, the talk was carried on, of course, in a low and becoming tone, though, for the matter of that, the couple in the next apartment would not have been disturbed had the talking been ever so loud, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bet, my lord," said Dashwood aloud, and in the same moment turned to mademoiselle with some high-flown compliment about the beauty of her complexion, and the dangers of going without a veil on ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... napkin; not think small beer of oneself &c (vanity) 880. Adj. dignified; stately; proud, proud-crested; lordly, baronial; lofty- minded; highsouled, high-minded, high-mettled^, high-handed, high- plumed, high-flown, high-toned. haughty lofty, high, mighty, swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, magisterial, imperious, high and mighty, overweening, consequential; arrogant &c 885; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "Oh, Mr. Coventry, this is too high-flown. Let us both return thanks to the Almighty, who has preserved us, and, in the next place, to Mr. Little: we should both be dead but for him." Then, before he could reply, she turned to Little, and said, beseechingly, "Mr. Coventry has been ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... is half so bad as blabbing what you know—not even the risk of getting caught in a lie. They laugh at scruples of conscience; and they place little dependence on mother love, or father love, or any kind of love which isn't self-centered and decidedly material. They also have little use for high-flown sentiment, poetry, old-fashioned prejudices and pretences of romance; and if they do have time to read a book, they want it to be something up-to-date and exciting—a detective story, for instance, with a master thief and vampires. In addition ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... a duke nor an archbishop, but a humble member of the lower automobiling classes, the high-flown title startled me. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... pretend to understand any thing of these high-flown sentiments, niece; you have all that glory to yourself: I would teach you a little plain sense, and not have you so wise as ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... paid to Maimonides' memory in many instances produced most extravagant poetry. The following high-flown lines, outraging the canons of good taste recognized in Hebrew poetry, are supposed ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... profecturus sum. That's rather high-flown, but I understand it perfectly, though any other man might cudgel his brains over it. That means in Danish: There is come profecto a lot ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... white head, immaculate blue coat and gold buttons—to which coat were attached several orders—had been seen hovering about from chair to chair through the rooms. He attached himself specially to elderly ladies, his contemporaries. To these he repeated the identical high-flown compliments he had addressed to them thirty years before, in the court circle of the Duke of Lucca—compliments such as elderly ladies love, though conscious all the ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... How could they impress their comrades of the office or the workshop without having a red sash, an embroidered cap, and magisterial gestures! Others will bury themselves in official papers, trying, with the best of wills, to make head or tail of them. They will indite laws and issue high-flown worded decrees that nobody will take the trouble to ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... however, his inspiration weakened; his command of his material left him; and he was no longer able to fill the figures of his creation with the old intellectual sublimity. His heroes and his heroines became mere mouthing puppets, pouring out an endless stream of elaborate, high-flown sentiments, wrapped up in a complicated jargon of argumentative verse. His later plays are miserable failures. Not only do they illustrate the inherent weaknesses of Corneille's dramatic method, but ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... to make enquiries after Miss Monimia. She was very ill, but Sibylla hoped she would soon be well enough to attend upon her father. Mr Percy Marvale made a multitude of quotations from some of his own melodramas apropos to the occasion, and Sibylla replied in the same high-flown style. It was evident they were quite used to such incidents in the Surrey, and I left them to entertain each other. On the doctor's arrival, he pronounced it improper to remove Mr Smith after his system had undergone such a shock; and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... turns to pass by Otto's house. Not that he counted on seeing him, but the sight of the house was enough to make him grow pale and red with emotion. On the Thursday he could bear it no longer, and sent a second letter even more high-flown than the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your misfortunes; but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch it. It is easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the subjects that would give great satisfaction to—a breast quite at ease; but as ONE observes, who was very seldom mistaken in the theory of life, "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... entitled, A List of Curses performed by Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, of Hammersmith Terrace, without Medicine: By a Lover of the Lamb of God, and was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury in very high-flown terms. Mr. De Loutherbourg was described as 'a gentleman of superior abilities, well known in the scientific and polite assemblies for his brilliancy of talents as a philosopher and painter,' who, with his wife, had been made proper recipients of the 'divine manuductions,' ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Don Jose's dagger plunged into my heart, not Carmen's. That sounds high-flown, but I mean it—a sudden, sick, cold sensation, as if everything was numb. Lady Ver turned round pettishly to Christopher. "What on earth is the ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... seemed to have been gaining in importance the longer he carried it, and this opportunity of giving it to her came at the right moment. He remembered Larralde's words concerning the person to whom the missive was addressed, and the high-flown sentiments of that somewhat theatrical gentleman became in some degree justified. Julia Barenna was a woman who might well awaken a passionate love. Conyngham realised this, as from a distance, while Julia's mother spoke of some trivial matter of the moment to unheeding ears. That distance ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early dinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance that the voluble Dona Maria—electing him as the distinguished stranger above ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... instruction—in the subject of Russian literature—I am also not in harmony with the tastes of the day; and so it comes about that I am turned away.' (Punin laughed his sleepy, subdued laugh. He had retained his old, somewhat high-flown manner of speech, and his old weakness for falling into rhyme.) 'All run after novelties, nothing but innovations! I dare say you, too, do not honour the old divinities, and fall down ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... harmony together—he is likely to be of great service both to the cause and to the Committee, and is publicly as well as personally a very valuable acquisition to our party on every account. He came up (as they all do who have not been in the country before) with some high-flown notions of the sixth form at Harrow or Eton, &c.; but Col. Napier and I set him to rights on those points, which is absolutely necessary to prevent disgust, or perhaps return; but now we can set our shoulders soberly to the wheel, without ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... when slung from the hand of this humble champion they left a mark wherever they struck. He didn't care for that round, smooth kind of preaching which always rolls off; he liked the word to strike, mark, and abide where it fell. He had no sympathy with high-flown sermons which shut out the Cross of Jesus and those good old Gospel truths associated with that dear emblem of God's love to the world. If such a discourse were delivered in his hearing he was sure to say something about it. "Praacher brought us a lot ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... time past your daughter has grown extraordinarily romantic and strangely high-flown in her ideas. In spite of the pains I have taken to combat these tendencies in ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... utterances or forms of his own, and that he consequently accepts poetry as a ready-made ornament, something pretty and exotic, which is valued in proportion to its prettiness and rarity. Be the reason whatever it may, certain it is that nothing can be too artificial or high-flown to please the Italian peasantry: its tales are all of kings; princesses, fairies, knights, winged horses, marvellous jewels, and so forth; its songs are almost without exception about love, constancy, moon, stars, flowers. Such things have not been degraded by ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... ready, but this remembrance pricked her own conscience and paved the way to a reconciliation. Nancy had no high-flown notions. She loved money, but it must be got without palpable dishonesty; per contra, she was not going to denounce her sweetheart, but then again she would not marry him so long as he differed with her about the meaning of the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... selfishness, Raymon stands in contrast with the ideally chivalrous Ralph, Indiana's despised cousin, who, loving her disinterestedly and in silence, has watched over her as a guardian-friend to the last, and does save her ultimately. The florid descriptions, the high-flown strains of emotion, which now strike as blemishes in the book, were counted beauties fifty years since; and even to-day, when reaction has brought about an extreme distaste for emotional writing, they ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... literature to proclaim boldly the refusal to consider anything human as alien from human literary interest. But, as nearly always happens, it had exaggerated its protests, and become sordid, merely in revolt from the high-flown non-sordidness of previous romance. Lesage took the principle and rejected the application. He dared, practically for the first time, to take the average man of unheroic stamp, the homme sensuel moyen ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... done at Porto Santo, where there were no ships and no money. Influence must be used; and Columbus knew that his proposals, if they were to have even a chance of being listened to, must be presented in some high-flown and elaborate form, giving reasons and offering inducements and quoting authorities. He would have to get some one to help him in that; he would have to get up some scientific facts; his brother Bartholomew could help him, and some of those disagreeable relatives-in-law must ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... letter to Southey was despatched; and from an excitement not unnatural in a girl who has worked herself up to the pitch of writing to a Poet Laureate and asking his opinion of her poems, she used some high-flown expressions which, probably, gave him the idea that she was a romantic young lady, unacquainted with the realities ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... same emphasis as Jeptha is spoken of as the son of an Harlot. Mechanic wares were disposed of at those stated gatherings, which combined popular games, chariot races for the nobles, and markets for the merchants. A Bard of the tenth or eleventh century, in a desperate effort to vary the usual high-flown descriptions of the country, calls it "Erin of the hundred fair greens,"—a very graphic, if not ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps, their wig and mace, sceptre and crown. A severe decorum rules the court and the cottage. Pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful. They hate nonsense, sentimentalism, and high-flown expressions; they use a ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... triumphant. This is almost more than mortal can achieve, and bridegrooms generally manifest some shortcomings at the awful moment. Daniel Thwaite was not successful. He was silent and almost morose. When Lady Fitzwarren congratulated him with high-flown words and a smile,—a smile that was intended to combine something of ridicule with something of civility,—he almost broke down in his attempt to answer her. "It is very good of you, my lady," said he. Then she turned her back and whispered ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... for the vultures of physic—I was bled copiously—I was kept quiet in bed for six days, at the end of that time, my constitution and youth restored me. I took up one of the newspapers listlessly: Glanville's name struck me; I read the paragraph which contained it—it was a high-flown and fustian panegyric on his genius and promise. I turned to another column, it contained a long speech he had the night before made in the House ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them that you dine at la Rapee, so that the general of the national guard is obliged to gallop about for two hours to receive your orders before he can find you, and you seek in vain to conceal your embarrassment by high-flown phrases. You seek in vain to conceal this banquet given to assassins beneath the pretext of a banquet in honour of liberty. But these subterfuges are no longer available; the moment is urgent, and you will no longer deceive the sections, the army, or the eighty-three departments. Those who rule ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... been goin' about casooal, an' his air is a heap high-flown. He's been pesterin' an' irritatin' about the post-office for mighty like an hour, when all at once he crosses over to the Red Light an' squar's up to the bar. He don't invite none of us to licker—jest himse'f; which onp'liteness is ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and beautiful thing is mind!" and it went on in the same high-flown strain to no particular end. But the editor praised it, after having declined the verdict of the audience that she was its author; and I felt sufficiently flattered by ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... convince me that I might lose more than I gained, even though I should get more money by going elsewhere. "It is for you," said he, "to think whether our names on your title-page are not worth more to you than the increased payment." This seemed to me to savour of that high-flown doctrine of the contempt of money which I have never admired. I did think much of Messrs. Longman's name, but I liked it best at ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... at all. Why then should I try, if my way of trying is of no use? Why should I try to be honest, sober, and useful, if that is not true religion?—if what God wants of me is not virtue, but a certain high-flown religiousness which I cannot feel or even understand?'—and so they grow weary in well-doing, and careless about the plain duties of morality. They become careless, likewise, about the plain duties of religion; and so they are demoralised, ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the morning of the appointed day the guests began to arrive, some by water, some on horseback, Colonel Verney meeting each arrival with a stately bow and a high-flown speech of welcome, and handing him on to the hall where stood Sir Charles Carew and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... One gets tired after business, and you can't get the books. I have been to some extension lectures, of course, 'Lizabethan Dramatists,' it was, but it seemed a little high-flown, you know. And I went and did wood-carving at the same place. But it didn't seem leading nowhere, and I cut my thumb ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... being,—admires Hanover and Berlin very much; and looks upon Sophie Charlotte in particular as the pink of women. Something between an earthly Queen and a divine Egeria; "Serena" he calls her; and, in his high-flown fashion, is very laudatory. "The most beautiful Princess of her time," says he,—meaning one of the most beautiful: her features are extremely regular, and full of vivacity; copious dark hair, blue eyes, complexion excellently ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... The legislative machinery is not to be shattered, but made use of; it must be employed against itself to effect the required injury; in this way the operation at a distance will appear legal, and, garnished with the usual high-flown speeches, impose on the provincial mind.[34125] From the 3rd of April, Robespierre, in the Jacobin club, always circumspect and considerate, had limited and defined in advance the coming insurrection. "Let all good citizens," he says, "meet in their sections, and come and force us ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... always shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the following day, finding her a little better humoured, to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young women: but ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... his work; because, ignoramus as he may be, a man can see, with a little common sense, what is done properly and what is scamped. Well, Monsieur Garneret, I was terrified to find in his themes so many high-flown ideas; some of them were very fine, no doubt, and I copied out on a paper those that struck me most. But I used to tell myself: All these grand speeches, all these histories, taken from the books of the ancient Romans, are going to put my lad's head in a fever, and he will never ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... 'She's a little high-flown,' observed Fustov, who had apparently regained his self-possession completely. 'All girls are like that... at first. I repeat, everything will be all right to-morrow. Meanwhile, good-bye. I'm tired, and you're ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... rapture; his ecstacies are excited so readily, from the excessive warmth of his disposition, and its proneness to admire and wonder, that my new situation was a subject to awaken an enthusiasm the most high-flown. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Washington" offered unlimited possibilities for material favor; and to the good divines the "simple faith and childlike docility" of these children of the forest were a constant delight. And then how well their high-flown compliments and flowery metaphors would sound in article and speech to the wondering East! So I sent Stickeen Johnny, the interpreter, to call the natives to another hyou wawa (big talk) and, note-book in hand, the doctors "went ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... "High-flown notions! Your family is not in any great distress, that I see: there is a change, to be sure, in the style of life; but a daughter more, you ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... (still unfinished), Saint Maur, Monceaux, and Chenonceaux. Also she favoured men of genius and gladly read, or had read to her, the works which they presented to her or which she knew they had written, even the high-flown invectives which they launched against her, at which she scoffed and laughed, but took no other notice of, calling ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the all-important exhortation with which Christ seeks to sober a frivolous curiosity. In its primary application, the 'strait gate' may be taken to be the lowliness of the Messiah, and the consequent sharp contrast of His kingdom with Jewish high-flown and fleshly hopes. The passage to the promised royalty was not through a great portal worthy of a palace, but by a narrow, low-browed wicket, through which it took a man trouble to squeeze. For us, the narrow gate is the self-abandonment and self-accusation which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Landor's favorite topics, and his ire was rarely more quickly excited than by placing before him a specimen of high-flown sentimentality. He would put on his spectacles, exclaim, "What is this?" and, having read a few lines, would throw the book down, saying, "I have not the patience to read such stuff. It may be very fine, but I cannot understand it. It is beyond me." He had little mercy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... affliction and persecution by Richelieu, and from the commencement of her Regency, these returning exiles and liberated prisoners had been gathering round her until at last, formed into a faction, they gave themselves out as the Queen's party, and by adopting a high-flown, turgid, and mysterious style of phraseology, and assuming bombastic and braggart airs of authority, coupled with an affectation of capacity and profundity, obtained for themselves from the wits of the Court and city the nickname of The Importants, under which they figured until absorbed ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... we have endeavoured, as much as possible, to bring them before the reader, and to make them speak for themselves. They are a half-civilised, unlettered people, proverbial for a species of knavish acuteness, which serves them in lieu of wisdom. To place in the mouth of such beings the high-flown sentiments of modern poetry would not answer our purpose, though several authors have not shrunk from ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... that they did not perceive the approach of their chief and his orderly; and Brant, with a sign to the latter, halted only a few paces from this central figure. His speech was a singular mingling of high-flown and exalted epithets, with inexact pronunciation and occasional ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... came: all this he has already described at wearisome length, in his fantastic semi-fabulous way. [Bielfeld, i. 68-77; ib. 81.]' Friedrich himself seemed moderately glad to see Bielfeld; received his high-flown congratulations with a benevolent yet somewhat composed air; and gave him afterwards, in the course of weeks, an unexpectedly small appointment: To go to Hanover, under Truchsess von Waldburg, and announce our Accession. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
